1. Short notice – the deadline is 16:00 UK time tomorrow, Thursday 23^rd June – but that doesn’t always affect the quality of an application in my experience: IATEFL offer a host of scholarships – no fewer than 28 – for their annual conference, which next year is in God’s Own County, Yorkshire, in Harrogate https://www.iatefl.org/get-involved/scholarships

Give it a go, if you see this in time. You will need to create a free IATEFL account if you don’t already have one.

2. First of two pieces today from The Conversation, The School Cat Stevens built: how Conservative politicians opposed funding for Muslim schools in England by Helen Carr from Birmingham University https://theconversation.com/the-school-cat-stevens-built-how-conservative-politicians-opposed-funding-for-muslim-schools-in-england-161956

Includes the Yusuf Islam (the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens) song, A is for Allah, that he wrote for his young daughter https://youtu.be/-L-GOHa5-YQ

The Trojan Horse podcast I mentioned on Monday covers similar territory.

3. And here’s the second, Eye movements could be the missing link in our understanding of memory by Roger and Mikael Johansson from Lund University https://theconversation.com/eye-movements-could-be-the-missing-link-in-our-understanding-of-memory-185053 “Humans have a fascinating ability to recreate events in the mind’s eye, in exquisite detail”: that we all probably knew from our own experience, but the Johanssons suggest that the act of doing so activates (and accesses) our memory. Intriguing!

4. This week’s phobia, koumpounophobia, is “a relatively rare condition”, which is slightly surprising given the frequency of most people’s exposure to the object that provokes the phobia.

5. And, finally, I mentioned my forthcoming retirement to a friend earlier today and he replied, “Well jel” – which I had to look up, not being quite as streetwise and ‘with it’ as my friend – who will now reply, I’m sure, to say that no-one says ‘with it’ anymore! https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Well%20jel